Rascals Review

Director: David Dhawan
Cast: Sanjay Dutt, Ajay Devgn, Kangana Ranaut
Rating: **

David Dhawan was the pioneer of the farcical films genre with the kind of comedies he made through the 90s. However mindless his films might have been, it still had an inherent sense of humour and assured a few good laughs. Sadly, in the subsequent decade, all he served in the name of stress-free slapsticks is noise and commotion. While we aren't demanding that the filmmaker upgrade with times, all we expect is that the one-time king of comedy merely maintain his original brand of humour. Is that asking for too much?

Rascals is what one can call a 'vacation' filmmaking stint where everyone works on the film as if they were on a 'holiday' and the audience is expected to 'leave' their senses behind. The actors make least efforts to add conviction to their performances and the patchy writing just allows them to play as they please. Invariably the director tries to camouflage the shallowness in the story by adding depth only in the decibel levels of the dialogue delivery.

So you have conmen Chetan (Sanjay Dutt) and Bhagat (Ajay Devgn) in one-upmanship game to win the girl (Kangana Ranaut) loaded with assets (both financial and physical). It's never clear what they love more - her body or her bank-balance. And their lecherous rivalry only seems to be about who would get to hug the cleavage-popping girl more number of times.

One-upmanship has been a popular plot for several comedies since the times of Amitabh Bachchan - Shashi Kapoor's Do Aur Do Paanch (1980). Even David Dhawan had smartly handled the concept in his earlier comedies like Govinda-Anil Kapoor's Deewana Mastana (1997) and Akshay-Salman's Mujhse Shaadi Karogi (2004). Unfortunately it doesn't quite work this time, primarily because Kangana Ranaut doesn't share any chemistry with either men and so their persistent pursuit to get the girl falls flat.

Also thanks to the dull camaraderie, the viewer never really bothers which hero would actually win the heroine in the end. Thereby the small surprise in the climax (no, there isn't a cameo by a third hero) also doesn't register much. The storytelling in the animated title credits is more appealing than the conventional narrative structure.